Etc...

By
Compiled from wire service reports by Robert Kilborn and Ross Atkin /
June 10, 2004

Got room for one more?

If you missed it, there is a heartwarming story left over from last weekend's 60th anniversary D-Day ceremonies at Arromanches on the French coast. As we pick up the details, Keith Coleman, an octogenarian former gunner in Britain's Royal Air Force and World War II veteran, inadvertently has boarded the wrong bus for the long return trip to Paris, ending up instead at a military air base, where everyone else climbs onto a waiting plane. Although he speaks not a word of French, Coleman manages to make his plight understood to a uniformed officer at the facility, who places some phone calls to try to arrange a lift for him to the capital. He does, too - aboard what turns out to be President Jacques Chirac's personal jet. Once back in the city, Chirac even orders that his guest be chauffeured to the door of his hotel.

Let's try this again: New list of bargain colleges

A list of the best bargains in college education in the US, as compiled by Consumers Digest, appeared in this space May 27. Since then, however, the magazine's editors discovered a mistake in its computer-generated rankings. After fixes to the software, a virtually all-new top 10 list - with Eastern Oregon University the only carry-over - has emerged. The recalculated results take the relative measure of student and institutional factors, such as the number of PhDs on the faculty, graduation rates, and student-to-faculty ratio. The revised top-value public colleges and universities:

1. Florida International University2. Eastern Oregon University3. California Polytechnic State (San Luis Obispo)4. North Dakota State University5. North Georgia College & State University6. Utah State University7. University of North Florida8. Truman State University (Kirksville, Mo.)9. Southern Utah University10. University of Mississippi